I post controversial opinions quite a bit and get downvoted regularly. However, my well-liked comments and posts generally cause my karma to increase over time despite this.
I'd say it's about 10% of dead comments where I would understand if they were just dimmed, but they're dead so you can't upvote to help resurrect them, and you can't reply.
That's why we added the vouching feature. If there's a comment that's [dead] that shouldn't be, you can vouch for it by clicking on its timestamp and then clicking 'vouch' at the top of its page. When enough users vouch for a comment, it is restored to visibility. (There's a small karma threshold before vouch links appear.)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20600442
>And then when people will inevitably start wanting better home security (I'm thinking armored doors and such, not hackable "smart" locks) as a consequence of this, the government will start whining about not being able to break into people's homes as easily when they look for someone.
It's not aggressive or rude, and it does add something to the discussion (some other possible consequences of the things being discussed).
No reason IMO for that comment to be dead.
I'll try to add more as I see them.
edit: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20599625
>My federal tax bill is $50k per year. That means I'm spending $50k/year for my government to murder people, and spy on me, in my name. How sociopathic is that? Our money is being used to oppress is, and most people are just like "wow! neat-o tech!"
edit2: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20615725
>Where does using an ally's spy agency to circumvent being unable to target US Citizens fall on that list?
edit3: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20583625
>1. Expose the Government. 2. Run from the Government. 3. Profit.
I thought that one was funny.
edit4: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20542119
>If it means free video sharing (YouTube), photo hosting and messaging (Facebook), and career network (LinkedIn), yes, I'll gladly pay the small probability I'm collateral damage of a spy game.
I personally disagree with this opinion, but I don't see why it should be a dead comment. They are just saying that they are willing to accept the risks in exchange for the convenience. Not a popular position on hn, but in truth going by the success of companies that sell our data, this must actually be the majority opinion of our population.
All of the memorable unfairly dead comments to me are ones that some people may disagree with, but do seem to add something to the discussion. Looks to me like [dead] is being used to disagree.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20600442
the reason it is dead is because the person who made it recently got banned for bad behavior.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20582828
i'm not going to go through all of your examples, but this should hopefully be enough of a nudge to indicate that you have to look at the bigger picture.
every comment that user makes after getting banned starts out dead, but can be vouched back to life, if somebody thinks it is worthy.
How do they even work? I see posts get downvoted, but no downvote button.
If upvotes are agree/approval and downvotes are disagree/disapproval then why are downvotes used for automatic moderation too? It is a problem in this site and other sites that double-use downvote to mean two different, contradictory, things.
The strange thing about HK in particular is that they already offer a "flag" button. If the flag was dedicated to moderation and the downvote dedicated to discussion, the site would be fine, but downvote will auto-hide comments, grey them, shadowban people in certain cases (like green accounts), and is weighed during flagging/dead-ing (e.g. one flag for a grey comment Vs. multiple flags for others).
I think it has a chilling effect. People are hesitant to post controversial opinions no matter how well written because the consequences (via simple downvotes) can be problematic to even accounts in otherwise good standing.
In an ideal world a site should have an upvote/downvote and flag button. The first two should be dedicated to discussion only, and having a controversial viewpoint should be noteable but not punishable. The latter (flag) should be for comments thats that violate the site's guidelines or community standards (e.g. -isms, trolling, insulting, etc).
PS - Part of the problem right now is that for comments the flag button is hidden below the fold. Many new users may never see it.